Mother: 'There are people who weren't as fortunate — right outside our front door'

By Alex Burness

Daily Camera

Posted:
08/29/2014 12:06:34 AM MDT

Updated:
08/30/2014 07:47:13 PM MDT

One Year Stronger: 2013 flood anniversary

September marks one year since the historic 2013 flood ravaged homes, displaced thousands of residents and killed 10 people across the state, including four from Boulder County and two from Larimer County.

This special section is a collaboration of the Daily Camera, Longmont Times-Call and Loveland Reporter-Herald.

BOULDER -- Someday, when Ingrid Combs is older, her parents will tell her about Sept. 12, 2013 — the day she entered the world.

It had been raining for a few days, Marty and Laura Combs might begin. Then it was pouring, hard and constant enough that friends suggested the couple name the baby Noah if it turned out to be a boy.

They'll tell Ingrid about how her father woke up at 1 a.m. to a violent rush of water and mud in the basement, which ended up filling the family's house off of Linden Drive just northwest of Boulder with more than 2 feet of mud and sludge.

The roughly 12 hours leading up to the birth, they'll recall, included an evacuation to the hospital, hours of labor, a rescue from a trapped car and a fight to save their home.

"When we tell her more about her birth story," Laura said, "we'll say we're lucky that we're alive, and lucky that she's alive. One of the things we'll remember is just not taking any day for granted. Anything can happen."

'This is not the time'

Nearly a year after the flood, the family of three — he a day trader, she in finance, little she concerned mainly with naps and stuffed animals — are back in their house on Beaver Way. In June, the first-time homeowners, both 28, celebrated one year there.

The basement is mud-free and recarpeted. The doors and windows that blew open have been replaced. There's even a new back patio, built with rock recovered from a nearby pile of flood debris.

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"It was cool to build something out of the disaster," Marty said, "sort of as a reminder."

Reminders aren't exactly in short supply on Beaver Way. There's the patio, and the fact that the landscape around the home has changed dramatically, with the small, unnamed creek that ran alongside it completely redirected.

Of course, there's also Ingrid.

Laura had been a few days overdue when she and Marty went to sleep on Sept. 11, rain coming down in sheets so heavy that neither could make out much of anything outside the bedroom window.

Laura Combs and her daughter, Ingrid, on Aug. 18 at their home near Boulder. The morning of Sept. 12, 2013, Combs went into labor, thinking to herself: "This is not the time. I'm not having a baby right now. Our house is destroyed." (Jeremy Papasso/Daily Camera)

At 1 a.m. they awoke to crashing rocks and a car flipped in their driveway. Marty took a look at the basement, and by 1:30 a.m., realizing their home was in danger of total obliteration, ushered his 9-months-pregnant wife to the home of neighbors Dennis and Terri Giannetti.

"We were there, awake, just kind of keeping an eye on things," Laura said. "I was just hoping and praying I didn't go into labor in the middle of the night."

She didn't go into labor that night. But the next morning, she did.

"I was in complete denial," she said. "I thought, 'This is not the time. I'm not having a baby right now. Our house is destroyed.'"

The couple was rushed to Boulder Community Health in an emergency vehicle at 10:30 a.m.

Marty and a few friends left the hospital on foot, slogging through the flooded, mucky streets around yellow tape and police barricades to get back to the house, where they'd left behind a car seat and several other items.

"There was a huge waterfall by the house. It was ridiculous," said family friend Hank Grant, who joined Marty on the hike. "We hiked around rocks and saw that the garage door was broken and the car was buried above the wheels."

The band crawled through a broken basement window, finally landing in a room full of sludge.

"At first, we needed stuff for Ingrid," Marty said. "Really, it became a mission to save the house."

Added Grant: "I'm surprised the whole thing didn't fall over."

It never collapsed entirely, but the damage was extensive — Marty and Laura needed to redo their basement, get a new furnace and water heater, replace their buried SUV and fix their crumbled driveway.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency covered less than 10 percent of their total costs, though Servpro and several church organizations pitched in money, volunteer hours and even a few new appliances.

'Life had ended, and life had started'

Emily Briggs comforts a young girl after the memorial service for Wiyanna Nelson and Wesley Quinlan last September. Briggs was rescued from her car early Sept. 12, 2013, by two men, including Marty Combs, the father of a baby born just hours later. (Cliff Grassmick/Daily Camera)

Across Colorado, 10 people died in the flood. Four of those deaths occurred in Boulder County. Two of those took place a few feet from the Combses' front steps.

Wesley Quinlan and Wiyanna Nelson, both 19, were swept away by swirling water, rocks and mud after the car they'd been driving crashed at the intersection of Linden Drive and South Cedar Brook Road, about 200 feet from Beaver Way.

Their friends Nathan Jennings and Emily Briggs survived.

At 3 a.m. Sept. 12 — mere hours before Laura went into labor — the Combses and their neighbors heard a car horn blaring. They didn't know it yet, but Briggs was the one honking. Jennings had already been swept downstream and rescued from the rapids by volunteer firefighter Andrew Slack.

Briggs had lost hope.

"I gave up. I started falling asleep because I think that's just how my body reacted," she recalled. "A couple of seconds later, I heard a tapping on my window."

It was Marty Combs and Andrew Slack.

"I had never seen somebody that shaken up," Marty said. "She was pretty terrified, and for good reason. And she was really concerned about her friends who'd gotten swept away."

Briggs put one arm around each man, then collapsed.

"The emergency services couldn't help me," she said. "The people around me, who I didn't even think could see me, were the ones who ended up saving my life."

On foot, they brought Briggs back to the Giannetti home, where she and Jennings reunited.

"I had to, because that was kind of beautiful," she said. "In the same little spot on the earth, life had ended and life had started."

Laura's thoughts, exactly.

"Anytime it rains hard, it's a reminder," she said. "I feel very fortunate and blessed to be alive because I know there are people who weren't as fortunate — right outside our front door."

Meanwhile, Briggs, the bridge between the joy and profound sadness felt that day on Linden, said there's nothing she can do to repay the debt she feels she owes Marty, Slack and the rest of the Beaver Way neighbors.

She's living in New York now, taking classes at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. She hasn't spoken to or seen the Combses. But if she ever meets Ingrid, she'll know exactly what to say.

"I would tell her how special she is," Briggs said. "Something that was so out of her hands — two events on the same line, but on opposite ends of the spectrum. To be brought to life in a situation such as that, you must have a crazy journey ahead of you."

Marty Combs, Laura Combs and their daughter, Ingrid, on Aug. 18 at their home on Beaver Way just outside of Boulder. "When we tell her more about her birth story, we'll say we're lucky that we're alive, and lucky that she's alive," said Laura Combs. (Jeremy Papasso/Daily Camera)

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